Out On A Limb
I have drawn the ire of just about everyone ( except Ashcar) at ZNet with my pro-intervention in Libya stance. First real debate I've ever seen there so I think it is worth it. Even if that hadn't been my position before, it would be after reading a George Ochenski piece in our local Independent.
A sanctimonious progressive and least original thinker alive, he lashes out at Obama for the hurt he has caused his base. In the article he says POTUS (who he glorified during the election) rushed to "lead the attack". He is outraged a la Kucinich that the Pres didn't first ask Congress for the power to do so. First of all, George, Obama and the whole defense and foreign policy establishment were drug kicking and screaming into this action. Second, Ochenski now trusts the very Congress he usually excoriates as corrupt, inept, sclerotic,etc..
In other words he can't make up his mind whether he loves the process and the players or hates them. Which is it George? Does liberal democratic capitalism work politically or doesn't it? Worse, he doesn't even sense this inconsistency.
His argument is that it is simply "a matter of internal strife". "We are to believe that Gadhaffi would have decimated his own population" he says doubtfully, as if it is beyond ridiculous, or like Patrick Cockburn, he has his own sources. Of course George was gung ho for the Jasmine Revolution when it was Tunesian and Egyptian "internal strife" and it didn't cost him anything to be a democrat. And does he wish to argue Gaddafi was not now butchering people and would not have decimated Benghazi? He won't say. He just bemoans the fact we have unleashed our war machine "on another hapless nation." Hapless.
He loved Tunesia and Egypt because they were "non-violent" ( bullshit narrative he accepts) and he is a pathological pacifist. He falls easily into the tropes of THIS IS IRAQ, or THIS IS ABOUT OIL or IT COSTS TOO MUCH TO PROTECT ARABS. The problem, he says, is "there is no guarantee Gadhaffi will lose this fight." So, he only wants to commit when the outcome is guaranteed?
First, this is not Iraq. Ghaddafi was our vicious buddy till the crazy got too obvious but regional forces trumped the Western global plan.For his oil argument George quotes a Halliburton exec from 2003. The world has moved on. There are totally new and unpredictable forces at work threatening the whole order and so much of the left shrinks back instinctively.
Gee whiz they say, we just wanted modest reform. This is scary and out of control. Well guess what. This ride has just begun. Everybody wants revolution. They just don't want A revolution.
posted by troutsky @ 8:28 AM
15 comments
15 Comments:
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Fact seems to be that with the memory of Bosnia, Sudan and Rwanda in mind, he may well have acted in time to prevent a savage bloodbath by a man who is probably as insane as Idi Amin.
We can live with that as a nation.
"he may well have acted in time to prevent a savage bloodbath by a man who is probably as insane as Idi Amin.
"We can live with that as a nation."
Unlike that Gandhi of the Arab world, Saddam Hussein, who was a man of peace and progressive values, and whose overthrow by Republican President George W. Bush was totally uncalled for.
Why, the way those right-wingers carried on, you would have thought he was gassing and engaging in the wholesale massacre of the Kurds and Shiites in his own nation at any given opportunity, invading a neighboring country, constantly breaking the terms of numerous UN resolutions, and engaging in the torture of unknown tens and maybe hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens.
As if that were not enough, you would think he was daily shooting at US planes trying to enforce a legally sanctioned No-Fly Zone imposed by the UN to protect Iraqi citizens.
Why, if I didn't know better, I would swear he was capable of destroying entire ethnic groups, like the swamp people of the Euphrates area. To hear that fucking Bush tell it, you would think Saddam and those fun-loving sons of his were capable of kidnapping and raping Iraqi women and tossing men in wood-chippers feet first. Just for the fun of it, to hear them tell it.
Why don't those fucking right-wingers try to exercise a little tolerance and understanding. Don't they know its wrong to tell such damnable lies about men such as Saddam Hussein, the Lincoln of Mesopotamia?
I said he prevented a massacre, Pagan. Despite what you may have heard Hussein was not massacring his people.
It wasn't until the hero of the My Lai massacre, Colon (sic) Powell gave Hussein permission to fly attack helicopters after the Kuwait incident that the slaughter started.
Also, most Kurds were killed by other Kurds. Your ignorance of the Middle East is stunning. We won't mention the trumped up Iraq invasion by Bush II which would have been a massive disaster if Al Qaeda had not proven too radical for the Sunni population. We caught a real break.
I would have a little more patience with the right if they were more circumspect about their ignorance.
Forget good guys - bad guys dichotomy is the point here. Good president bad president, good intervention bad intervention.
It is all, as some gal on Meet the Press just said with refreshing candor, a "shit sandwich".
Their precious unstable stability, their global security doctrines, their frames and narratives, their order: It is all unravelling. No one believes a word of what anyone else says. It is not Blood for Oil. It is not primitive accumulation. It is pure panic in the face of events spiralling beyond the knowledge base of the Planners.
It is wonderfully chaotic. Each child that turns to their parents and asks "why"? will be met with a bewildered stare.
Freedom, human rights, sovereignty, autonomy? Are you arguing Bush truly cared or are you just saying na na na na na Your president is just as ridiculous as my President!
I'm not saying anything about good or bad, I'm just saying if Bush were still president, and was doing the exact same thing in Libya Obama is doing, Ducky's opinion would be the exact opposite of his opinion over Obama's actions.
My point is Bush's actions in Iraq, seen in the context of the then recent 9/11 events and the Global War on Terror, were a hell of a lot more justified than Obama's current actions.
By the way, I have no problem whatsoever with "War for oil", so don't throw that in my face. I'm fine with it. I'm more than fine with it. If anybody expects me to support a war effort, make it over something worthwhile, something that will conceivably benefit me. Everybody can take their bullshit about caring about their neighbor and brotherly love and stick it up their asses, because I know its a fucking sham.
When the first President Bush wanted to go to war in the first Gulf War, he admitted openly it was about oil. I had no problem whatsoever with that, and was in full support. Unfortunately, most people were not, so he had to go back to the drawing board and dredge up this horseshit about "freedom" (as if anybody in the Middle East outside Israel had any concept whatsoever about freedom). That got the people on his side. I stayed on his side because I knew what the war was really all about. Oil, oil, and more oil.
Not one drop of which we will gain from this Libyan misadventure. That oil is a French and British commodity. Let them deal with it. If we have to be involved, they owe us that much more over and above what we already do. One of these days those fucksticks need to get used to the concept of paying the piper. That's just the way I see it.
Indeed trout, the youth in a lot of Arab countries have figured out that they don't have to take it.
Gonna b some long nights at the Council for Foreign Relations trying to figure out how to put that genie back in the bottle.
Pagan, something I find absolutely remarkable, the right seems to think that the left has some particular affection for Obama, the Triangulator in Chief.
It's as if Glenn "Hot Chalk" Beck actually convinced the right that this guy is some kind of socialist. Sorry, that's the pure stinky cheese.
He is a socialist Ducky. Do you want me to tell you a little secret? I probably shouldn't do this, but what the hell, I'm in a generous mood. Well, actually I'm really just interested in seeing how you would twist yourself into knots answering this. So here goes-
When you guys deny that Obama is a socialist, and even go so far as to laughably proclaim he is a right-winger, you show people just how tyrannical the left would be if they ever got in power.
I'll let you figure out why that is. For now, let the contortions begin.
The problem lies in definition. The Oxford says that if production, distribution and exchange are regulated by the community, that is socialism. That makes Obama and Donald Trump socialists.
Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 or the "war on terror". When Bush the First promised aid and a no-fly-zone to the Kurdish rebels I supported that.But he abandoned them to be slaughtered.
Bush the First was a fucking dick. You may not know this, but he is not popular amongst conservatives. He is considered a RINO. I for one have a very strict set of guidelines for involvement in foreign affairs, especially when it comes to war. If it doesn't affect us in a significant way, we shouldn't be involved, period. Obama is an asshole who is in up to his ears in this shit, all over the Middle East. I have been up front in warning conservatives that they are making asses of themselves complaining about his so-called lack of involvement. Now that he is doing something, they just look fucking stupid complaining about it. I'm saying the exact same thing I've been saying all along. Obama is a socialist fuckstick who needs to be impeached, not only on this but on a whole slew of issues.
Ducky
Pssst Khadafy is a good commie and deserves to die for his crimes against humanity and support for terrorism. The Soviet Weapons and support of Chavez and Mandela make this man's mindset clear enough. Rev Tofu is waiting to get the memo from his Bolshevik masters.
Of course the Arab world will figure out sooner or later that commies have used them and fed them a diet of BS while supporting
people like Saddam, ASSad and
nASSer. If you have no job in Syria
blaming Jews while your corrupt commie approved government picks your pocket doesn't work. The people of Syria are starting to revolt and they should target all Western apologists for the Assad regime. Even the Pseudostinians will figure out they were used by Commies as hockey pucks.
Make the world a better place send commies to North Korea.
Did anyone comprehend Beak's rant?
It is above your IQ.
Commie imbeciles need to follow the coconut and embrace Khadafy. The deranged Col is a textbook Marxist clown.
Unlike the icepick catcher, Khadafy could accomplish his tasks and was not a circus clown.
I find myself in a weird position of agreeing with Duck and Trout against Pagan...
This Libyan war has certainly reversed many alliances. Even Hugo Chavez and Ann Coulter essentially say the same thing about Gadhafi...
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